Atikamekw knowledge, culture and language in Wikimedia projects

The project Atikamekw knowledge, culture and language in Wikimedia projects aims to increase the presence of Atikamekw knowledge, culture and language on Wikimedia projects by developing the Wikipedia in the Atikamekw language (Wikipetia atikamekw nehirowisiw) and uploading documents such as new photos in Wikimedia Commons. The long-term impact of the project is to create good practice documentation and to develop a toolkit to replicate at different scales for similar projects or other Aboriginal communities in Canada.

Context

Aboriginal Communities Outreach

The Aboriginal Communities Outreach Project of Wikimedia Canada has the vision to make knowledge freely available in all Canadian languages and to preserve those languages through the use of Wikimedia projects. The goal of this outreach project is to reach Canadian Aboriginal communities and to familiarize indigenous languages speakers with Wikipedia (and possibly other Wikimedia projects such as Wikitionary and Wikimedia Commons) in order for them to become active contributors developing content. We understand that language's importance to Aboriginal people is immense and bears an important social and emotional aspect. This project is also aligned with article 13 of the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People on the right to preserve, revitalize and develop indigenous languages. Canadian indigenous languages are also an integral part of the Canadian culture making the country one of the most linguistically diverse in the world. The "Atikamekw knowledge, culture and language in Wikimedia projects" project fits within this strategy as a starting block and a pilot project to be emulated in the future for other Canadian Aboriginal communities.

The Atikamekw Nation

The members of the Atikamekw nation call themselves Nehirowisiw and refer to their ancestral territory as Nitaskinan ("Our Land"). The community lives about 300 km north of Montreal, in three villages (Manawan, Obedjiwan and Wemotaci ) located on an ancestral territory of 80 000 km2 in central Quebec. Up until the 1950s, the Atikamekw Nehirowisiw maintained a semi-nomadic and autonomous way of life, based on hunting, picking and fur trade. Their system of knowledge is rooted in a symbiotic relationship with the forest, and their cultural transmission rely on oral tradition. Some of these knowledges are considered "common knowledges", and may freely be shared with all. Others are considered "specific" to a family or an individual (e.g. crafts, maps of resources), or "sacred" and secret (e.g. use of medicinal plants). Among Canadian First Nations, the Atikamekw community has one of the best preserved use of its native language with nearly 6,600 speakers (95% of its total population). The Atikamekw language was standardized with the help of the Atikamekw Linguistic Institute (ILA), founded in 1986. It is still the teaching langage in some elementary schools of the nation. The main second language of the community is French.

The sedentarization politics and assimilation methods induced a very abrupt lifestyle change for the community. Children from 6 to 17 years old were sent to residential schools far away from their villages and families, for 10 months a year. This educational policy remained in place until the mid-1970s, damaging the intergenerational transmission of knowledge and culture, and causing trauma in the community.[1] For 35 years, the Atikamekw Nehirowisiw have been negotiating with the Goverment of Canada regarding use of their ancestral land, reclaiming autonomy and self-determination. In 2014, the Atikamek nation issued a manifesto declairing their sovereignty over Nitaskinan.

Previous projects

This project is the continuation of a previous project in the Atikamekw community of Manawan held in 2013 and 2014. The pedagogic project called Projet Wikipetia Atikamekw started in 2013 in Manawan. Its goal was to develop the Atikamekw section of the Cree Wikipedia. Since the Atikamekw is a language of the Cree language family, at this time, it was included in this Wikipedia and no specific Wikimedia project in Atikamekw, nor any content in this language, existed prior to this project. During both editions, the students of the Otapi High School of Manawan were asked to write articles in their native language on the Atikamekw Wikipedia under the supervision and the training of their computer science teacher (Bilbo40, Luc Patin) and the support of the community's language keeper (Jean-Paul Echaquan) and a graduate linguist student (Kiackw, Nastasia Herold) as well as the technical support of an experienced Wikipedian (Amqui). Some teachers also took the initiative to write articles themselves. During those projects the Atikamekw Wikipetia saw the creation of more than 100 articles, which is remarkable for a language that had no Wikipedia article at all not even two years ago. The project was publicized on a local radio station and on the nationale radio (Radio-Canada). It attracted contributors and interested contributors from the community as well. The Wikipetia atikamekw holds over 160 articles. The last article, before this project, was created in 2014. The project was stopped because of a lack of resources.

Activities and Calendar

Training and discussion sessions with the Atikamekw community

Several training and discussion sessions with the atikamekw community will be held so that local project partners become autonomous in their work on Wikimedia projects and in the translation of the Mediawiki interface. Discussions with community authorities will take place to establish ethics guidelines for copyright on Wikimedia projects and their consistency with Atikamekw's traditional knowledge transfer methods.

List of sessions:

Training session will be held at the Otapi school of Manawan (24 October 2016)

Training and discussion session at the central Council of the Atikamekw Nation at La Tuque (25 November 2016)

Photo documentation and discussion session in Manawan (May 2017)

Pedagogic project

The pedagogic project will be held from September 2016 to May 2017 at Otapi High School in Manawan. It will be the third edition of a pedagogic project at Manawan's Otapi High School, building on the successes of the previous editions (as shown in the section "Scope" above). The project was elaborated in collaboration with Sakay Ottawa (interim director of the school) and Luc Patin (user:Bilbo40). The main aim of the project is to use Wikipedia as a teaching tool for the transmission of the Atikamekw language. Highschool students will be trained as part of their computer classes by their teacher. Additional training will be proposed in the form of extracurricular activities. In the project context, students will create articles written in Atikamekw in the Atikemekw Wikipedia within the Wikimedia Incubator, under the supervision of their teachers (Luc Patin, Antony Dubé) and with the support of the language keeper of the community (Jean-Paul Echaquan), as well as the online technical support of an experienced Wikipedian with smaller projects in indigenous languages (Amqui) and an experienced Wikipedian with pedagogic projects (Benoit Rochon). Our local coordinator will also help monitoring atikamekw content and activity on the Atikamekw Wikipedia.

Research and Outreach project

These activities will build on the insights gathered from activities and discussion in Manawan and La Tuque. Their goal is to document the project, provide recommendations, and transfer the knowledge acquired into the French Wikipedia.

Activities:

Gathering of documentation (automn 2016): a student employed by the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Governance at the University of Quebec in Outaouais will work on gathering a bibliography and write a literature review.

Research seminar at University of Quebec in Outaouais (winter 2017): the subject of the seminar concerns the compatibility between the modes of transmission of indigenous knowledge and the protocols of the Wikimedia projects.

Edit-a-thon Workshop (spring 2017): an edit-a-thon workshop will be held simultaneously at several locations, the Otapi School in Manawan, the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec in Montreal and the Université du Québec, 'With an online participation with the aim of writing articles on atikamekw subjects on Wikipedia in French, mainly on subjects deemed most important by the atikamekw community.

Panel at Wikimania Montreal (August 2017): presentation of the results of the project and discussion with the other chapters of the Wikimedia Foundation which have missions concerning indigenous communities. The presentation will take place even if it is not accepted by the organizing committee of Wikimania, it will then take place at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec.

Collection of information for the writing of a research to be published in an open scientific journal.

Bohensky, Erin L. and Maru Yiheyis (2011) "Indigenous Knowledge, Science, and Resilience: What Have We Learned from a Decade of International Literature on 'Integration'?" , Ecology and Society, 16(4), p. 6.

Houde, Nicolas (2011) Experimenting with what will become our traditions: Adaptive co-management as a bridge to an Atikamekw Nehirowisiw post-treaty world in Nitaskinan. Thèse de doctorat, départment de géographie, Université McGill, Montréal.